Thank you for the much needed context. You saw through the trees and spotted the wood!
No, it was a personal opinion. And it seems you didn’t watch the video. His very first sentence said it all And number of subscribers does not say anything. If it would some excellent & famous darktable channels look not too well.
I am a semi pro landscape / astro photographer. I love my Darktable / Gimp workflow, I would gladly pay for it if needed, I could never bring myself to go backwards and use archaic lightroom / photoshop again. I am significantly more productive and generate much better quality works with darktable / gimp.
Nope, did not watch. I got things to do and watching YouTube is usually a waste of time especially when the click-bait-o-meter is pretty high.
But I would say that in an attention based economy subscribers and views are indeed the thing including what one does to try to capture those. Eyeballs are the new dollars, just don’t try to pay your electricity bill with them because the envelope gets soggy.
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I watched a (very) little but I canned it pretty quickly. His obvious bias got old really quick, not to mention his refusal to maturely engage with @prokoudine in the comments. I don’t necessarily agree 100% with Everything GIMP (nor pretty much anything else), but there’s nothing of value in his dodgy viewpoint.
[ edit ] - “Attitude” would probably be a more accurate term than “viewpoint”.
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Seems like you are assuming that Adobe is behind this somehow. But this guy is actually switching to Affinity Photo which is a very nice package with PS-like workflow, a perpetual license, and a very cheap one at that. I wouldn’t use it (for starters, that would mean switching to Windows/macOS for daily work), but I completely understand why users pick it over GIMP.
Nobody needs to be paid by Adobe. All it takes is someone who is genuinely tired waiting for workflow boosters like adjustment layers that users have had in other software since late 1990s. It’s a completely valid argument whichever software you pick instead of GIMP. You don’t like his unprofessional attitude and I don’t like it either, but let’s not conflate attitude with argumentation.
Moreover, what do you really know about Adobe’s assumed heat over the subscription model? I mean, do you read their quarterly/annual reports? Because I do. The dip in revenue they had around the time they introduced subscriptions (ca. 10 years ago) is long gone. I’d have to double-check, but I recall the amount of licenses/subscriptions being now double of what was there in 2013.
If any lesson should be taken from this, it’s that the development model that GIMP and some other projects have is not really sustainable. A volunteer can do whatever he/she likes and no one has the right to tell them otherwise. But this freedom has its consequences.
It’s been 15+ years since the first commit towards the support for a new processing engine that promised non-destructive editing among other things, and we are not there yet. If v3.2 is another 5 years long development effort, we are going to see even more frustrated users calling it a day and quitting. Would you blame them for not wanting to be holding their breath for 20 years?
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Where does he say he’s switching to Affinity Photo? He says he’s probably not doing tutorials for that and just doing them for LR and PS. Simply just not using GIMP any more because of it’s slow development or wanting/needing something else is fine but making stuff up about it, extending that to all open source, his click bait and unhinged comments indicates there’s something more to it.
It will be about money but it won’t be anyone paying him to say things. Creating drama gets you more views and he’s hoping to make money from the affiliate links as he encourages people to ‘upgrade’ from their ‘garbage’ open source software. He also thinks he’ll get more views from LS, PS content and videos about switching software.
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Yup, there are plenty of good reasons for not using GIMP and it’s got plenty of problems but I think declaring it “dead” is nothing short of click bait. The project will continue to putter along as it has for the last couple of decades. Will it become irrelevant to more and more people’s workflow? Probably, unless project picks up steam, but it’s far from dead or abandoned.
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In a newer video.
Not that it matters really but he’s not switching to it or doing tutorials for it, he uses Photoshop. He’s just giving paid alternatives for the affiliate links it seems.
If the Gimp makers saw that all Gimp users were leaving Gimp, that would motivate them little. But if the makers could see that there are many users, like me, who enthusiastically use Gimp for their serious work, that could help a lot.
I think we would have to make a call so they could see how enthusiastic we are about this good old software.
Long live Gimp!
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What?! GIMP is dead?!
Sorry, but I didn’t know! I’ve still been using it to do everything I could ever possibly want or need from a professional-quality image editor!
Oh, no! Please help!
P.S. in the absence of a ‘sarcasm’ emoji, this one will have to do:
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If a meteorite strikes the next GIMP developers meeting or they are bribed out by Adobe, it will not be an extinction event. The source is there, the packages are there.
There would be no further development, but some bone hard package maintainers in Debian would keep the package in the system. And if not, just install an older Linux system or compile it yourself. FLOSS is unkillable.
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These are wonderful thoughts. So I can consider the issue settled. Gimp will thus live forever.
Let’s speak practically: Whoever wants to use it can always use it, even if nothing new would be added.
Thank God.
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Will Gimp be dead? In 5 years terms, yes. If you have online alternatives that are more capable, then why you need gimp? if you have offline workstation, then yes you may need.
Whats gimp problems? There’s lots of discussions but if the developers are ignorant, then people will leave and use Affinity, Adobe etc. Gimp developers dont have vision, motivation… You have to sell your ideas to the public, and you will get developers, money. Thats how Blender succeeded.
And btw, gimp have lots of money to hire fulltime developers. They just dont use it. https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/qowcy7/1300000_in_bitcoin_donations_idle_since_2014/
Gimp have serious problems and if you dont adress them, nothing will change:
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name - dont be ignorant and change it. Saying its not problem is just ignoring it. Many schools will not teach gimp because of its name. Developers have said they dont care… And thats problem if you dont have childrens who can and want use it
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ui and code - gimps ui is ugly and terrible to use. you can ignore it but thats a fact. i have trying to get people to use gimp and they all say same thing. If you use Adobe software and try Affinity, its a lot easier than trying gimp. Gimp tries to be different and thats problem. Listen to professionals and change it.
I have heard that gimp code is a total mess and its really hard for new developers
If you have to use text tool thats working very unintuitively and is really hard to use, you have to google to understand it, then something is seriously wrong. And if the developers say, text tool is working ok, thats how it is designed and no plan to change it… then you will not gain userbase.
- gimp is missing critical features. Well known example is to draw a circle, add drop shadow, do other stuff and later try to make the circle bigger… you cant.
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ui and code - gimps ui is ugly and terrible to use. you can ignore it but thats a fact.
I’m not arguing any of your points, but a pet peeve of mine is when people use the word “fact” when they’re actually expressing an opinion—possibly even a very common opinion.
I don’t have any (significant) issues with the Gimp interface.
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name - dont be ignorant and change it
Two answers:
If you use Adobe software and try Affinity, its a lot easier than trying gimp.
Gimp isn’t a Photoshop clone. The UI is only part of the “problem”, tools may no work exactly ythe same, etc…
Well known example is to draw a circle, add drop shadow, do other stuff and later try to make the circle bigger… you cant.
Non-destructive editing. This is in the plan (because, believe it or not, the Gimp developers have a vision).
(*) IMHO the problem is that Gimp is a “brand” and an “ecosystem”. Either you totally distance yourself from Gimp, and then have to rebuild the brand and ecosystem from the ground up (which means adapting all the scripts/plugins/resources…) or you keep ties with Gimp but then the Unspeakable Name shows up everywhere.
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Mmm… Maybe that’s why my (C)olour-(R)eproduction (A)logorithm (P)resets never took off. 
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I have spoken with many professional designers and they all say gimp is ugly and hard to use. They dont mean it have to be copy of Photoshop. But if theres standard how things should be, then you have to follow those rules, otherwise no one will use the software. Its not always about missing features.
For example cropping, that actually dont crop, you have to set it to delete pixels? This should be other way around - default must be to crop image (delete outside marked area all pixels), if you want to save those pixels outside marked boundries, you can set it to do so (this should not be default). And theres no button to apply crop, you have to press enter (but if you want to rotate image, then there is a button). And all the floating layer stuff. If you paste something, it will create floating layer, if you paste something new, it will overwrite data on it, if you use text tool, it will paste the floating layer on background layer etc … you will lose data. You have to make floating layer to new layer, but this sis extra step and designers dont have time for it. They will run away… and havent they already? And dont mention the texttool designers must rely on
Gimp name… i dont care about it, but thousands of people will. If schools dont use gimp because of its name, then why ignoring it and not adressing it as problem to work on?
I believe gimp can be “Blender2”, but this will need time and effort. You have to make campains and say what you want and how it will be done. And people will donate and help. Gimp is dying, why donate money to it? This is bad mindset and gimp’s developers must brake it or nothing will happen and gimp will die.
We already have better online solutions… Some of them have been developed by 1-2 guy with few years. I mean why we have to wait for non destructive editing for next 10 years? Yes, gimp is free opensource software, but if it can prove its worth it, people will use it, donate and it will survive. Theres so many opensource projects that prove it.